Reflections on Journalistic Role Perceptions in Belgium and Sweden: Strategies and Difficulties While Reporting on Refugees

Role perceptions of journalists are no global monolithic professional entities, but, as has been demonstrated by previous research, cultural differences between professional role perceptions of journalists operating in different countries are pronounced. In our study we centralize our attention on these role perceptions focusing on a highly debated news topic that has been covered intensely during the past few years: the so-called ‘refugee situation’. Our study uniquely combines survey results (N= 1267) with qualitative in-depth interview data (N=30) collected among as well French and Flemish speaking journalists in Belgium as among Swedish journalists who have been reporting frequently on refugees. By exploring the challenges journalists experience while reporting the refugee situation, our results show that although in survey questions journalists from different regional origins express different role orientations, journalists from all covered regions go through a similar process of negotiating their roles when talking about how they cover the refugee situation.